This week once again raised the question of whether Columbus Day should remain a holiday,  given the history, or whether it would be more appropriate to replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day. A binary decision, which I find easy to make, I choose Indigenous Peoples Day. Yet, that was not always the case, as the context of the question is not so binary in its history.  As an educator in equity, diversity, and inclusion, I have had to take a different look at

As the proud grandson of Sicilian immigrants, Columbus Day as a child had a bit more significance because of the Italian heritage of Columbus and seemed a better representation than the series of Godfather films popular during my childhood.  My grandparents carved out a life for their twelve children in the coalfields of southwestern Pennsylvania like many other immigrants throughout the Appalachian region. They worked hard in a manner I couldn’t begin to fathom, faced with poverty and uncertainty that my privileged status again, has never experienced nor could begin to comprehend. They arrived to a United States that was still feeling the impact of nativism that targeted working class and poor southern/eastern Europeans immigrants, many who had fled war, ethnic prejudice, poverty, and political and economic exploitation in the countries of their birth. Additionally, these immigrants from the working class were targeted often due to their darker Mediterranean features and as well as the stereotype of being leftist, socialists, and anarchists due to the populist movements in Europe during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that tried to address economic exploitation in countries still ruled by European monarchies. Adding to the mix, Roman Catholicism, my own religious tradition and the tradition of most Italians, did not yet enjoy the normative status enjoyed today. It was still a suspect religion, especially by those of the dominant culture and by mainline Protestantism (Evangelicalism as we know it today did not yet exist as a normative expression).

Reacting to nativist and anti-Catholic religious bigotry, often violent in nature, the Italian-American community sought to become part of the dominant Anglo-Saxon and “white” landscape in the United States. And what better way perhaps, than to shape a national holiday focused upon a famous Italian figure.  But given the short span of Italian presence the United States, there really weren’t any famous figures at the time born in the United States. There was however, one famous Italian associated with the “New World,” Christopher Columbus. The sailor and head of the Spanish expedition would wind up on the shores of what is now referred to as the Dominican Republic.  Yet, was this the best selection the Italian community had to offer?

Columbus never actually set foot on any part of what is now currently part of the United States and never even reached his original destination. His exploits where on behalf of the Spanish crown, enemies of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that shaped United States culture in its formation. The impact of Columbus upon the Native Americans along with other Conquistadors that would follow him was devastating. While no one could predict the presence of viruses and germs (not yet identified in medicine) upon the indigenous people, the death toll of over 39 million indigenous peoples in less than 75 years after the arrival of Columbus in Hispaniola, Mexico, and Peru alone due to military conquest, disease, slaughter, forced labor, poor nutrition, and mass suicides, did not seem to deter Spanish expansion and quest for gold.  Given the fatalistic nature of Spanish and European Catholicism, such devastation only fed into the “pagan” label applied to indigenous cultures.

But Columbus was not a passive agent in this “encounter.” He came to claim, placing the cross along side the Spanish flag, he laid claim to a land he had yet to even see, in the name of the what would be referred to as the “doctrine of discovery.”  This doctrine evolved from papal bulls (declarations) issued by Pope Nicholas V originally authorizing King Alfonso V of Portugal to “reduce any Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers” to a state of perpetual slavery, laying the foundation of the Portuguese, and later the Spanish slave trade. This same Pope extended this decree to all European countries and to their global exploration, thus establishing the enslavement of native, non-Christian inhabitants of Africa and the “New World.” It was under this Catholic umbrella that Columbus and later “explorers” would operate in their incursion into the western hemisphere. Besides this official position, Columbus in his own journal writings spoke to his own paternalistic view of the indigenous cultures upon his encounter with them, remarking on their ability to copy actions, thus suggesting they would make “good servants” and that in his Christocentric view, they have no religion or belief system: “I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion.” This tabula rasa, or blank slate perception of those outside of the Christian faith was standard for the Roman Catholic Church at this time. In an extension of the Spanish Reconquista, the Requerimiento dispossessed the indigenous of their lands in the name of Christ’s vicar (the Pope) and granted them to crown of Castile of Spain. In the name of Christ, indigenous were consigned to virtual slave labor through the encomiendas system. These systems, backed by the Church, often left indigenous underfed and overworked, and also subjected indigenous women to forced “marriage” and rape.

Did Columbus do all this himself? Obviously no, but he certainly was a complicit and enthusiastic agent in his own contribution and the belief that his actions were done in the presence of God:

“I am a most noteworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvelous presence.” His actions set off a history that still impacts people throughout the western hemisphere today.

When I think of how to represent the richness of Italian culture in the United States, Columbus doesn’t come to mind any more. The Knights of Columbus, one of of the largest Catholic charitable organizations, lives with a name embedded in colonialism and conquest, and were complicit in pushing for a national holiday for Columbus for the purpose of promoting Italian-Americans. The complicity of Catholicism in the enslavement of indigenous peoples and later the people of Africa, in the name of conversion of “pagans,” is complicity in what many refer to as “America’s Original Sin.” In a push to combat nativism and prejudice against Italian immigrants, and later to bring Italians into the mainstream of white Protestant Anglo-Saxon culture in the United States, did Italian truly put their money on the wrong horse? Were they aware of this history? Did they ignore it? Did they turn around and participate in, and give license, to the very same forces of bigotry and racism that inspired the desire of a national holiday that would legitimize the presence of immigrant Italians? Rather than choose a path of empathy and solidarity with indigenous people, did they choose to participate in the extension of colonialism? Are Catholics comfortable with the role of Catholicism in the subjugation and exploitation of generations of indigenous peoples at the hands of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and later the United States and Canada and other countries throughout the hemisphere?

I am a proud Sicilian-American, proud of my grandparents who did not come to the USA as conquerors or colonizers, but as poor folk trying to seek a better life like many others, possibly unaware of the history they were inserting themselves into. Yet they came as part of a larger Italian wave of immigration. So I ask my Italian American community, wouldn’t our heritage better be served and celebrated by the example of another? Is Columbus, never even a citizen or visitor to the shores of what is now the United States, the person we need to honor? And to those outside of the Italian-American community, is maintaining a holiday for Columbus based upon support of Italian-American culture, or perhaps the desire to maintain a Eurocentric version of United States history? Perhaps for others, like many who supported the holiday in the early 1900’s, your support for Columbus is rooted in white nationalism and nativistic beliefs.

I think Italian heritage deserves more, and I think as a community, we Italians have to acknowledge our own community’s complicity in a thread of history that is not grounded in a “righteous” cause, but was the extension of colonialism and violent subjugation and exploitation. Would it not be a more honorable given the harsh conditions of poverty and bigotry in Italy that pushed so many to the United States to be in solidarity with our Indigenous sisters and brothers in pushing back against bigotry and poverty here. And for those of us still claiming Catholicism and the foundational belief that all are created in the image of god, is not solidarity with Indigenous peoples, many who are also Catholic sisters and brothers, the more Christ-like action?

So, it is BECAUSE of my pride as an Italian-American, that I support Indigenous Peoples Day. It is because of my Roman Catholic faith, a faith that calls for repentance in the face of sins of OMMISSION as well as commission, that I believe in the need for my Church to face its own history and complicity in the history of systemic oppression and racism imposed upon entire people groups, very often done in the name of Christ, or of those claiming to be Jesus’s representatives. So sorry Christopher, this Sicilian-American will continue to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day from here on.